Through Eyes Not My Own
by ebjameston
Summary: I wake up, and my dad is dying. I wake up, and I'm trapped in a locker. I wake up, and I'm in the forest. I wake up, and I'm in my bed, screaming. I wake up - but I'm not me anymore. A retelling of season 3b from Stiles' point of view, as he fights to keep his sanity and himself as the nogitsune takes hold.
1. Anchors

This is the retelling of season 3b, through Stiles' eyes. I don't own anything you recognize - just the excursions into Stiles' mind. This will almost definitely not make sense if you haven't watched the episode tied to the chapter.

Anchors

I wake up, and my dad is dying.

We're trapped in the root cellar under the Nemeton, load-bearing beams crashing in around us.

Isaac's wolf-strength is gone – some fraction of my brain that isn't completely panicked and spinning and out of control realizes that the eclipse must have finally started – and I've got the bat jammed in so that Scott's mom won't get crushed, but my dad…

The beam's resting across his chest, pinioning him against the dirt floor, where a dark puddle of something is starting to spread out around his shoulders and _oh God oh God oh God -_

* * *

I wake up, and I'm in a locker.

This is not the first time this has happened. In sixth grade, Jackson and a few of his douchier friends realized that I was skinny enough to fit in our brand-new, middle-school lockers, and I spent a decent amount of time looking out through the slots in the metal door while Scott tried, largely unsuccessfully, to jimmy me free.

This doesn't feel like that.

This feels like being trapped, horribly vulnerable, and the panic – always here these days, always dwelling in the back of my mind, just waiting for me to drop my guard – perks up and starts to sharpen her claws against the insides of my lungs.

I slam my palm against the door, over and over until my skin splits open, but the door mercifully gives and I stumble out into the boys' locker room. It's dark and quiet and completely abandoned.

I take tentative steps out of the locker room, looking up and down the abandoned hallway, pushing the niggling thoughts – _What am I doing here in the middle of the night? Where is everyone else? _– down, down, down. Now is not the time to figure out how I got here. Now is the time to figure out how I stay alive.

The short hairs on the back of my neck tingle as I pad down the hall leading to Mr. Harris' old classroom. Something is tugging me into the room with a steady, irresistible pull just behind my heart, and I want to turn around and run – no, _sprint_ – all the way home to see my dad and reassure myself that that other thing was just a dream, that he's okay, and I'm okay, and we'll all be okay – but then I step into the patch of moonlight spilling out through what used to be Mr. Harris' door and a leaf tumbles across my bare feet (_Why aren't I wearing shoes?_) as I take in the Nemeton, in all its forest-y glory, sitting smack dab in the middle of the classroom.

Cautious steps takes me closer, and I'm struck again by how freaking big the thing is. I could lie down across it, completely stretch out, and not touch a single piece of the rim. That pull in my chest drives me closer and has me reaching out a hand, but the panic in my head is gaining a voice and sinking her claws deeper into my lungs.

I lean in further, my fingers just above the mossy tufts that dot the stump's surface, unable to referee the battle between the pull of what's in front of me and the terror that's screaming, _screaming _at me to back up, get away, don't touch it don't touch it don't touch it and my blood is rushing through my ears and I watch tendrils shoot up out of the stump, wrap around my wrist, and slam my palm down onto the Nemeton and for a brief, blinding instant, the pain sears every particle of me into nothingness –

* * *

I wake up, and I'm in my bed.

My heart is pounding, and the remnants of panic are still clinging to me, but I'm in my bed. This is good. This is real.

"You okay?" A soft voice next to me asks. Lydia, still half asleep, levers herself upright and wraps a small hand around my arm. "Stiles?"

I heave a sigh, trying to marshal my heart and breathing back into normal rhythms. "Yeah, I was just dreaming." I take a beat, swallowing down more of the panic. "It was weird, it was like a dream within a dream."

"A nightmare?" Lydia confirms.

Another beat. _No, _I want to say. _No, it wasn't a nightmare, it was real, just as real as this, just as real as you. _ But that's not the sort of thing you say to the insanely beautiful and brilliant woman in your bed, so I just sigh again and nod, interlacing my fingers with hers. "Yeah."

Her other hand rubs soothing little circles around my shoulder, and for a moment I let myself relax. The moonlight streaming in my window illuminates her hair and exposed skin in a way that's got to be magic, and my heart stutters just a bit. Lydia, the girl I've been hopelessly crushing on since kindergarten. Lydia, the girl who wouldn't even give me the time of day until all this crazy werewolf shit started. Lydia, who was always with the wrong guy – Jackson, Aiden…_what is Lydia Martin doing in my bed? _

And just like that, the panic is rearing its ugly head again.

"Wait a sec," I say, still working through the details in my head. "Lydia, what are you doing here?"

She gives me a brief, confused look, but both our heads snap to the door in response to the movement and almost imperceptible sound from just outside.

The door should not be open.

"Hang on," I mumble, untangling myself from the covers and shoving away confused thoughts of _Lydia-freaking-Martin in my bed_.

"Stiles, where are you going?" She asks, tightening her grip on my arm.

"I'm just going to close the door," I say. My voice is steady, but my hands are shaking – I have to close the door. The door should not be open.

"Just go back to sleep," she says, tugging on my shoulder.

"No, no, I should close it," I say, gently pushing her hands away and moving halfway off the bed.

"Don't worry about it," she whispers, and her hand on the back of my neck almost makes me forget. Her fingers in my hair quell the panic that's firmly entrenched in my chest, but the darkness outside the door is immense and somehow just so wrong and I manage to pull away from her.

"What if someone comes in?" I say, finally getting to my feet.

"Like who?"

I'm taking short steps across the floor, unable to tear my eyes away from the darkness just over the threshold.

"Just go back to sleep, Stiles."

I shake my head, my heartbeat rising, cold sweat breaking out over my skin. "No…but what if they get in?"

"What if who gets in?"

I don't know. Or maybe I know, but I can't say. Or I do know – I know who's out there, waiting in the darkness, and that door _should not be open_.

"Stiles?" Lydia says again, and this time the fear is plain in her voice. "Just leave it, please?"

I'm at the door, just inches away from touching the knob. All I have to do is push the door shut. That's all I have to do. This door should not be open, and I can just close it right now and this will all be over.

"Stiles?" Lydia repeats, her voice rising half an octave. "Stiles, come back to bed. "Stiles, please!"

My fingers tighten around the doorknob, and I'm dimly aware of Lydia shouting my name and _please _and _Stiles, don't _and then I throw the door open –

* * *

I wake up, and I'm in the forest.

More specifically, I'm in the Nemeton grove. Lights – the kind we use to light the lacrosse field for night games – blaze into existence in a circle around the dead tree, and I throw up my forearm to shield my eyes.

Again, that pull in my chest and the fear in my head go to war, and again, am I trapped in between. This is familiar, though, and I can remember seeing the Nemeton in Harris' classroom – but no, that had to be a dream, trees don't grow indoors – and that feels like lifetimes ago, anyway – but the lights around the edge of the clearing, those can't be real –

"Okay," I say to myself. "It's just a dream."

The dirt squishing up between my toes doesn't feel like a dream.

"This is just a dream," I say more firmly. "Get it out of your head, Stiles."

A cold breeze lifts the back of my shirt, sending icy fingers up and down my spine. Breathing is getting difficult.

"You're dreaming, all right? So wake up, Stiles!"

I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I slam a hand against the side of my head, pulling at my hair -

"Wake up, Stiles!"

The entire clearing starts vibrating, sending my panic into overdrive. Something is coming, I can feel it, and I have to get out of here, this isn't safe, the door shouldn't be open –

"WAKE UP!"

* * *

I wake up, and I'm in my bed.

Again.

I squint against the sunlight, trying to reconcile the sounds of birds chirping now against the buzzing of the lacrosse lights from that dream – _Was that really the dream, Stiles? _taunts a voice in my head – and my dad - _my dad, crushed to death in the root cellar under the Nemeton_ – pokes his head into my room.

"Hey, time to get up, kiddo," he says. "Get your butt to school."

He leaves my bedroom door wide open, with not a hint of the darkness from before lingering behind.

My nasty little voice choruses, _The door should not be open__**. **__You'll let them in._

* * *

"And you couldn't wake up?" Scott asks again, one step behind me as we walk toward school thirty minutes later. It's another bright, beautiful California day in Beacon Hills. You'd never know that werewolves and darachs and all sorts of nasty beasties run around here going bump in the night if you didn't happen to be best friends with one of said beasties.

"Nope, and it was beyond terrifying," I say. "Ever heard of sleep paralysis?"

"Uh, no, do I want do?"

"Well, have you ever had a dream where you want to wake up, but you feel like you can't move or talk?"

Scott squints for a minute. "Yeah, yeah, I've had that."

"That's because during REM sleep, your body is basically paralyzed," I explain, spouting off the results of the research I'd done this morning while brushing my teeth. "It's called muscle atonia. That way, if you start dreaming about running, you don't actually start running in your bed."

"That makes sense," Scott says, in that way that people agree with me when I'm starting to ramble about something that doesn't particularly apply to them.

Undeterred, I forge on. "Sometimes, your mind can wake up before your body does. So for a split second, you're actually aware that your body is paralyzed."

I jump up a few of the concrete steps while Scott, still squinting, contemplates. "And that's the terrifying part."

I nod. "Turns your dream into a nightmare. You can feel like you're falling, like you're being strangled, or in my case, like you're at the center of a grove of magical trees, where human sacrifices took place."

We push through the doors into school.

"You think it means something?" Scott asks.

I pause, not sure if I'm ready to let my most recent theory out into the world just yet. If there's anyone who needs to know, though, it's Scott – and Allison. "What if what we did that night…what if it's still affecting us?"

"Post-traumatic stress?"

I huff out a bit of air as we walk into our history class. "Something."

We settle in amongst all the nice, normal teenagers who don't have to deal with the fallout of dying to save their parents. Class is about to start, but I have one more thought lingering in my chest, one that's likely to burst out and kill me if I don't tell someone.

"Want to know what scares me the most?" I say, lowering my voice. Scott turns over his shoulder to look at me, all heartfelt, earnest concern. "I'm not even sure this is real."

* * *

I wake up, and I watch Scott get sliced in half by vengeful hunters.

* * *

I wake up, and Derek – out of his mind with grief over Boyd, Erica, and Cora dying during a battle with the Alpha pack – goes rabid and rips Isaac and Allison to shreds.

* * *

I wake up, and I'm in my bed.

I wake up, and I scream. My dad runs in and grabs me, just like he has every night this week, holding my arms down against my sides so I won't hurt myself, pressing a hand against my chest. The pressure just barely breaks through the overwhelming fear and my heart starts beating again after a few misfires.

* * *

I first notice it when I'm getting ready for school – my history textbook doesn't make sense. The title, which I know is _Allies and Axis_, reads _Dalesi xis Anla_. Before I have time to fully process and freak out over that, my dad is standing in the door, looking at me with concern.

"Hey," he says. "you all right?"

I look down at the book in my hands. _Allies and Axis_.

"You ready for school?" He prompts.

"Yeah," I say, choosing not to explain momentary dyslexia to a guy who's been doing really, really well at accepting the whole newly-introduced supernatural element of the world into his life. "Yeah, I'm good."

The look on my dad's face clearly says that he is not buying my bullshit.

"Dad, seriously, I'm fine," I protest, trying to sound more convincing. "It was just a nightmare."

_Just _another _nightmare. Time for a subject change._

"What's that?" I ask, pointing to the box he's carrying.

"Oh, just, uh…files from the office," he says, shrugging carelessly.

"It says 'Sheriff's station, do not remove,'' I point out, gesturing to the bright yellow tape with those words on one end of the box.

"Well, yeah, unless you're the _Sheriff_, " he says, giving me a trademark Stilinski smirk-and-sass combo. I snort in derision.

"Get your butt to school, all right?" He orders, and I turn back to my backpack obediently, trying to ignore the feeling that he's said those words to me recently and halfway through the day I woke up trapped in Gerard Argent's lair with 100,000 volts of electricity frying my brain.

* * *

I wake up, and it's lunch time after fourth period. I see Scott stumbling down the stairs across the quad, and then he literally runs into me.

"Hey, hey," I say, putting my arms out to catch him. "You all right?"

He doesn't answer, but he doesn't need to. He's breathing hard and has that same wide-eyed, blown-pupils look I'm starting to associate with myself. "You don't look all right, Scott."

"I'm okay," he tries, but his voice is rougher than usual.

"No, you're not," I say. "It's happening to you, too. You're seeing things, aren't you?"

Scott's face clears. "How'd you know?"

Before I can formulate an answer – in this version of reality, I haven't explained my dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-freaking-nightmare situation to Scott yet – I hear footsteps behind me and turn to expand our little circle to include Lydia and Allison.

"Because it's happening to all three of you," Lydia says.

We pow-wow over lunch, sharing our continued tales of the weird the way we share pretzels and carrot sticks. Allison's got a half-decomposed aunt popping up at inopportune times, and Scott's Alpha form is out of control – or, at least, it looks to him like it is. We've all got heads full of terror, and Lydia is reveling in it.

"Well, well, look who's no longer the crazy one," Lydia says, leading us back into school after lunch.

"We are not crazy," Allison protests.

Lydia whirls on one precariously high heel and looks at each of us in turn as she calls out our issues. "Hallucinating. Sleep paralysis. Uncontrolled werewolf-ness. Yeah, you guys are _fine_."

There's really no comeback to that. Especially since I've got three days of uncompleted homework in my backpack – hard to answer questions when none of the letters are in the right order.

"We did die and come back to life," Scott admits after a second. "It's got to have some side effects, right?"

The bell rings.

"Keep an eye on each other," I say. "Lydia, stop enjoying this so much."

* * *

I wake up, and I'm a little kid, by myself, watching my mom die in the hospital.

* * *

I wake up, and my dad is getting his eyes seared out by Deucalion.

* * *

"Maybe we need a little more time to get back to normal," Scott says, leaning up against the locker next to mine a few days later.

"Yeah, try to not to forget," I say, struggling with my lock, "we hit the reset button on a supernatural beacon for supernatural creatures. There's a pretty good chance that things are never going back to normal." I try the lock a fourth time, but it's still sticking.

Scott tunes out, listening to something over my shoulder. I look closer at the padlock's face, and panic starts nudging against my lungs again when I realize that the numbers aren't numbers at all – just symbols.

_Focus, Stiles_, I tell myself. _Just take a deep breath and focus. It always goes away after a minute or two._ I heave out a giant breath, look up at the ceiling, shake the symbols out of my head, and when I look at the lock again, it's back to normal numbers. I'm about to sigh in relief when I look over at Scott and he looks back at me with glowing Alpha red. "Whoa, dude, your eyes."

"What about them?" Scott asks, oblivious.

"What about them – they're starting to glow!" I look up and down the hallway – there are way too many people around for this.

"What, you mean right now?"

"Yes, right now! Scott, stop! Stop it!"

"I can't," he says, starting to breath heavier. " I can't, I can't control it!"

I grab the back of his head and force him to look at the ground. "All right, just – keep your head down. Look down." I pull his head close to my shoulder and force him into the nearest empty classroom – probably got a few weird looks for that one, but it's better that Scott Alpha-ing out in the middle of a crowded hallway.

I pull the door shut behind us as Scott starts to growl and shake. I rush forward to help, but he wards me off with a hand. "No – stay back! Get away from me!"

"Scott, it's okay," I argue. It's not like this is the first time I've been around him in werewolf-mode, after all.

"I don't know what's going to happen!" He says, and there's such anxiety in his eyes that I'm rooted to my spot on the floor. "Get back!"

As I watch helplessly, he stumbles between two rows of chairs and starts digging his claws into the palms of his hands. Blood runs down his wrists onto the floor, and for a second it only seems to be getting worse – but then he collapses to his knees, fangs and claws retracting, and looks up at me. "Pain makes you human," he says between panting breaths.

"Scott, this isn't just in our heads," I say, sinking into a crouch. "This is real. And…it's starting to get bad for me, too. I'm not just having nightmares, I'm having these dreams where I have to literally scream myself awake. And…sometimes I'm not even sure if I'm ever actually waking up."

"What do you mean?" Scott asks, blood still dripping onto the floor.

I look down. "You know how you can tell if you're dreaming? You can't read in dreams. More and more the last few days, I've been having trouble reading. It's like I can't see the words, I can't put the letters in order."

Scott continues to stare at me. "Like, even now?"

I stand up slowly and look around the classroom. I end up staring at the chalkboard behind the teacher's desk, willing the letters into order, but it's hopeless – there are no real words, just jumbles of letters and broken phrases and more X's than any English sentence would ever contain. I shake my head. "I can't read a thing."

Scott slowly stands, and I grab him some tissues to wipe off the blood. "Maybe it's just dyslexia?" He offers. "You know, that learning disability."

I chuckle quietly. " How is this what our lives have come to? Hoping for a late-onset learning disability, because the alternative is that I'm legitimately going insane?"

"You're not crazy, Stiles," Scott says. He balls up the blood tissues and lobs them into the trashcan. "None of us are. We're just…recovering."

"Recovering from dying," I say. "I wonder why there's no manual for that?"

* * *

I wake up, and the Nemeton is on fire. It's on fire and there are thousands and thousand of fireflies streaming out of it, swarming, crawling all over me –

* * *

"You know, the last time we brought one of these to her grave, it was stolen the same day," I say, setting the elaborate flower arrangement down on my dad's desk. "One hundred bucks down the drain."

My dad doesn't immediately respond, so I peer over the top of the desk to where he's on his knees amidst piles of paper. "Hey Dad? What're you – what're you doing down there?"

He looks up, slightly guilty. "Working. But hey, if somebody wants flowers that badly…it's the gesture."

I walk around behind his desk. Every few months, we make it a point to go visit my mom's grave together, but my dad's clearly got more on his mind than just that. These aren't just any old papers – these are past case files. And more of those boxes with the yellow "Sheriff's office, Do not remove" tape on them. "Hey, Dad, what is all this?

"I've been looking over some old cases from a, uh, more _illuminated_ perspective, if you know what I mean."

I pick up one of the files from his desk. "Strange sightings of bipedal lizard man sprinting across freeway."

"Kanima pile," my dad says, smacking his hand down on an existing stack. I obligingly toss the file where he's indicated, then squat in front of him. I've got a bad feeling about this.

"Dad, you're not going back through cases, seeing if any of them had to do with the supernatural…are you?"

My dad sighs. "I admit that the recent opening of my eyes to the great mysteries of the universe has got me reassessing. At least a hundred cases here where I could look at the details and I could ask myself, if I knew then what I know now…"

I swallow hard. "Right, but are you sure you want to go down that path?"

"Do I have a choice? There's one case in particular that I can't get out of my head."

He launches into the background of the case he's hung up on, the Tate family's car accident and disappearance of one of the daughters. I try to pay attention, but inside I'm spiraling downwards in shame. I'm definitely in the running for Worst Son of the Year these days – things were strained between us after I looped him into the supernatural party in the first place, but the added pressure of the FBI audit run by Scott's dad now has my dad second-guessing every decision he's made over the past few years.

He finishes explaining the Tate case, and I have to admit that the claw marks and full moon coincidence points toward a certain group of shapeshifters we know. Another piece of evidence catches my eye, too, although it's not directly related to the Tates.

"Hey, Dad, where are all these going?" I ask, gesturing widely to the boxes and files strewn across his office.

"Well yeah, yeah…we probably need to talk about that."

"Talk about what? Why do all these boxes say that they're going to the office of _Special Agent McCall_?"

"Now, Stiles, don't get worked up about this," he says. "You've known about the audit, and you have to know what they'd find. I've got years of unsolved cases stacked up against me here."

"Yeah, but they weren't your fault!" I protest. "I mean, here, look at this – you've got seven cases alone that were probably caused by Jackson as the kanima. You didn't know kanimas existed then!"

"And I'm sure I can explain that to the FBI in a way that won't make me sound completely insane," he says, rolling his eyes. "My days in this office are numbered, Stiles. And I'd just like…I'd like to go out on a good note. Maybe solve one or two of these, now that I really know what I'm up against."

I swallow hard, nearly having to fight back tears. _Seriously, Worst Son in the History of the Universe. _

* * *

I walk into economics just at the bell, and there's a new girl sitting in my usual seat.

"Hi," I say quietly. "I usually sit there."

The girl looks up and me and starts motioning with her hands – it takes a second to kick in that she's using sign language. "Okay, no problem," I say, giving her a small grin to get the point across. "It's all yours."

I slide into an empty desk a few rows back, flipping through the text to last night's reading. A few pages in, I notice that I'm the only one making any sound, and in no time my heart rate is rising again. Everyone else is sitting perfectly still, staring at Coach Finstock at the front of the room.

"Hey, Coach," I say, oddly relieved to see him. "Thought I was in the wrong class for a sec."

In response, Coach holds up his hands and signs something back at me.

"Uh, okay," I stutter. "I don't actually know sign language - actually, I didn't even know that you knew sign language or that that was even an elective here… well, this has been good, I'm going to head out."

I gather up my stuff and head for the door. Coach's eyes follow me, making calm yet desperate eye contact, as if he's trying to will me to understand whatever he's signing. By the time I get to the door, the entire class is staring at me and repeating the same series of signs, getting faster and more frantic and there's a buzzing in my ears and the room is starting to spin –

I wake up, and Coach's whistle is blaring.

"STILINSKI!" He shouts. "I asked you a question."

"Uh…sorry, Coach, what was it?" My head is killing me, but this feels right. Getting yelled at by Coach – this is normal.

Coach smiles. "It was, 'Stilinski, are you paying attention back there?''

"Oh. Well…I am now?"

"Stilinski, stop reminding me why I drink. Every. Night. Does anyone else want to answer the question on the board?"

I shake my head again, trying to clear out the buzzing. One seat over, Scott is staring at me with such worry all over his crooked-jaw face that I feel compelled to say, "I'm all right, I just fell asleep for a sec."

Scott's face doesn't change. "Dude. You weren't asleep." He flicks his eyes toward my notebook, and when I look down, my handwriting has spelled out the phrase "WAKE UP."

My handwriting has spelled out the phrase "WAKE UP" dozens and dozens of times.

* * *

"Okay," Scott says after school, when we're sitting at a table with Isaac, Allison, and Lydia, "so what happens to a person who has a near-death experience and comes out of it seeing things?"

"And is unable to tell what's real or not," I add.

"And is being haunted by visions of dead relatives," Allison contributes.

"They're locked up because they're insane," Isaac states.

"Ha," I say drily. "Can you at least try to be helpful? Please?"

"For half my childhood, I was locked in a freezer, so being helpful is kind of a new thing for me."

"Okay, you're still milking that?" I retort, aware that I'm crossing a line by mocking Isaac's childhood trauma, but I'm just so goddamn tired and irritable –

"Hi," says a new, perky voice from the end of our table. It's that new girl, the history teacher's daughter – Karen? Katie?

"Kira," Scott says confidently, and our entire table turns to look at him. He's only got eyes for the new girl, though, and I know that look – this is Allison all over again.

Kira explains that she overheard part of our talk and thinks we were describing bardo, the in-between state from Tibetan Buddhism, pretty accurately. Apparently, bardo's full of hallucinations, and visits from deities.

"Demons!" I repeat. "Why not?"

"Hold on," Allison interrupts my sarcasm. "If there are different progressive states, then what's the last one?"

"Death," Kira says matter-of-factly. "You die."

You'd really think that hearing about your impending doom would start to feel pretty underwhelming by this point, out of sheer repetition – but that's apparently not the case. I've actually literally died once already this semester. Isn't that enough?

* * *

I wake up, and there are three red-eyed, forked-tongued demons standing around me, slicing of pieces of my skin with razor-sharp knives.

* * *

Later, Scott and I head to the animal clinic to see what Dr. Deaton might know about our side effects. I'm not overly optimistic, but Deaton's got a weirdly varied knowledge base and I'm not one to abandon a potential life raft. I give a brief rundown of my past week's attempt at sleep, and end up describing the incident from a few days ago – daydreaming a class full of aggressive sign-ers while apparently awake and scribbling WAKE UP to myself over and over.

"Sounds like your subconscious is trying to communicate with you," Deaton says after I'm done explaining.

"Well, how do I tell my subconscious to use a language that I actually know?"

"Do you remember what the sign language looked like?" Deaton asks. "The placement and the movement of the hands?"

"You know sign language?" Scott asks, clearly surprised.

"I know a little," Deaton says. "Give it a shot."

I hold up my hands and stumble through the motions that dream-Coach and the dream-classmates were making. There are only three that I can remember, but that seems to be enough.

"That's it?" Deaton asks, confusion on his face. "When is a door not a door."

"When is a door not a door?" I repeat, letting scorn creep into my voice.

"When it's ajar," Scott says quietly, like he's discovered the truest secret of the universe.

'You're kidding me. A riddle? My subconscious wants to tell me a riddle?" I demand.

"Not necessarily," Deaton interjects. "When the three of you went underwater, you crossed to a kind of superconsciousness. You essentially opened a door in your minds. "

"Okay, so what does that mean?" Scott asked. "The door's still open?"

" Ajar," Deaton repeats mysteriously – or he's just trying to be mysterious. I'm never sure with that guy.

"A door…into our minds," I say.

"I did tell you it was risky," Deaton cautions.

"What do we do about it?" Scott asks.

"That's…" Deaton hedges. "That's difficult to answer.

"Oh, wait a sec, I know that look," I say, waving a finger accusingly. "That's the we-know-exactly-what's-wrong-with-you-and-we-have-no-idea-how-to-fix-it look."

"One thing I do know is that having an opening like that into your mind? It's not good. You each need to close that door. And you need to do it as soon as possible."

* * *

I wake up, and Scott bursts into my bedroom with a flashlight, saying that we're going to go into the woods and find the lost Tate daughter's body.

I wake up, and Jackson is back as the kanima, and he eats Lydia in front of me.

I wake up, and I'm in my bed, screaming, my dad's arms around me.

I wake up.

At least

I think

I do.


	2. More Bad Than Good

More Bad Than Good

I wake up, and we're bringing Allison up to speed on what happened when we searched for Malia in the woods last night before Mr. Yukimura's history class starts.

"You're right that she won't go back to the den," Allison says, tracing a path along the map I've got up on my tablet with one finger. "Coyotes don't like wolves. And they're really smart – if they don't want to be heard, they actually walk on their toes."

I gape at her. "They _tiptoe_?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, they tiptoe."

The bell rings and Allison rushes out. I wander to my seat, mulling over the new information, and amusedly watch Scott and Kira have yet another horribly awkward but insanely cute conversation. This is _so_ going to be another Allison situation.

I tune in to hear Yukimura say, "There's a passage in our reading that I'd like to go over in more detail. Who would like to come up and read aloud for us?"

_Oh, God, don't call on me_. I couldn't even write my name on the top of my trig homework last night, it just came out all squiggles and backwards E's, and there's only one E in my name. I think. Whatever Yukimura's got written on the board might as well be in Klingon.

"Mr. Stilinski, how about you?"

I freeze. _No no no no no_. "Oh, uh…maybe someone else could…?"

"Everyone participates in my class, Mr. Stilinski," Yukimura says with a kind smile that I inexplicably want to violently punch off his face.

"Oh, ah…okay," I mumble. _Don't panic. _I push myself up out of my chair and head to the front of the room, where Yukimura has our textbook open to a page that, for a second, looks normal. I breathe a sigh of relief, but the page instantly blurs and my heart rate rockets. _C'mon, Stiles, focus_, I berate myself, wrapping my fingers around the edges of the podium and squeezing so hard that I'm surprised I don't break something. _Focus. Just breathe and focus. You've been reading since kindergarten, this isn't hard_.

In response, letters start to drop out of words and swim toward the bottom of the page, and my vision starts going black around the edges.

_Help_, I think. _Someone help_. I try to look up, try to get away from the mass of swirling letters, but the class is smudgy and the ground is shifting under me. I'm dimly aware of Scott walking toward me, carefully saying my name, but the floor tilts up sharply and one of my elbows hits the podium for support. It's hard to breathe.

"I should take him to the nurse's office," I think I hear Scott say over my head, and then he's got one hand on my upper arm and one on the back of my next and he's guiding me out of the classroom.

I stumble willingly down the hall and around corners, happy to be away from the words, but the panic is firmly set in now and walls are moving and my lungs seize up and I can't tell if I'm moving too fast or if the rest of the world is moving too fast, but something is _definitely _moving too fast and none of this is real, I've got to be dreaming again, if I could just wake up then everything would be fine –

We burst into the boys' locker room and I stagger a few steps, feeling time move in fits and starts around me. The tiny part of my brain that's still sane registers Scott asking if this is panic attack, and I shake my head while bracing my hands on the sink.

"It's a dream," I gasp. "It's just a dream."

"It's not," Scott interrupts. "This is real. You're here – you're here with me."

I stare at my reflection in the cracked mirror. No – no, this _has _to be a dream, because I can't read, and if I can't read in real life, then there's something much much worse than Russian-freaking-nesting-doll dreams going on –

"Okay, okay…what do you do?" Scott asks. "I mean, like – how do you tell if you're awake or dreaming?"

That little sane part cycles through everything I've read. "Fingers," I manage, spinning one of my hands wildly. "You count your fingers, you have extra fingers in dreams."

I don't say that I found that particular piece of information while I was doing research three days ago, right before I walked into a classroom and found Lydia dead in a chair, strangled by Ms. Blake, only to wake up and find myself back in the Nemeton grove –

"Okay – how many do I have?" Scott says. I don't immediately respond, trapped in a chorus of waking up but not really waking up, and he yells the next bit. "Look at me! Come on, Stiles! Look at my hands and count with me."

I rip my hands free of the sink and face him, reaching out for something, _anything_, I can use to steady myself. My lungs still aren't really working, and there's a voice in my head screaming that if I count Scott's fingers, I'm not going to like what I find.

Scott holds up one finger and says, "One."

A second finger. "…two?" I try, and it comes out as a panicked question.

A third finger, and the screaming voice gets louder and louder and it _hurts_, but Scott yells over it to keep going, so I manage to say "Three," and then "Four" doesn't feel quite as hard.

"Five," Scott says confidently, and we're done with his first hand. That's good – five fingers on one hand. _Wait, is that right? How sure am I that it's not supposed to be four?_

I shove that thought away and look to Scott's left hand. "Six. Seven."

Scott nods, says "Eight," and things are a little less shaky.

"Nine," I say, and with another shuddering breath, "Ten."

I look back and forth between his hands. All fingers accounted for. Ten.

"Ten," Scott confirms.

I'm not dreaming. Ten fingers, and I'm not dreaming. That's good – I'm actually awake? - but that's also…that means that I can't read at all. Even when I _am _awake.

I slide to the floor, willing my breathing to even out, and Scott crouches in front of me.

I let out another horribly shaky breath. "What the hell is happening to me?"

"We'll figure it out," Scott says. "You're going to be okay."

I'm struck by the absurdity of that statement. "Why? Are you?" He doesn't answer, but I push forward. "Scott, you can't transform. Allison is being haunted by her dead aunt. I'm straight-up losing my mind."

Scott still doesn't answer, but the next words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and they're the first thing I've been sure of in a long, long time. "We can't do this. We can't – we can't help Malia." _We can't even help ourselves._

Scott shifts, so that he's sitting in front of me. Resignation reads on his face, and I know that he knows I'm right, but there's something else there, too – resolve.

"We can try," he says. "We can always try."

* * *

I go back to class for second period, but any attempt at normalcy for the day ends when three things happen nearly at once.

First, I get a text from Scott.

_Malia at school. Tried to attack Kira – why's that doll in your lax bag?_

Second, the overhead alarm system kicks in, declaring this a Code Blue – someone or something hostile on school ground, stay in your classrooms and lock the door.

It's followed almost instantly by a text from my dad.

_Coyote attack at BHHS. School going into lockdown – meet me by the gym when your room's clear. _

Mr. Albertson pokes his head into the hallway, snags a few kids walking past, and locks the door behind them.

"Everyone just stay calm," he says, running through the attendance list and making quick calls to the teachers of the students he grabbed from the hallway. "I don't know any more than you do, so there's no point in asking. Now would be a good opportunity to finish last night's problem set, if you didn't happen to get to it."

A few students laugh sheepishly and pull out their textbooks. I actually did last night's homework – the numbers tend to stay in place better than letters - so I just anxiously fiddle with my phone.

It doesn't take long for the lockdown to clear, and I sprint across campus to the gym.

"A couple of students said they saw it running across a field and back into the woods," my dad says when I barrel into him. "Thank God nobody got hurt."

"What happens if she does hurt someone?" I ask.

My dad sighs. "Most likely, they'll have to put it down."

"_Her _down," I correct. "Dad, try not to forget – there's a girl in there, one that you'll be killing. Come on – you're not back to not believing, are you?"

"You know what," my dad says, stopping in the middle of the hallway and turning to face me, "I believe that there are a lot of things I don't understand yet. But that doesn't mean that everything and anything imaginable is suddenly possible. Now…are you 100% sure that this is a girl, and not an animal?"

"Yes," I say, practically before he's done speaking. "Because Scott's sure." I see Scott out of the corner of my eye at the end of the hallway, and figure another demonstration might be in order. I shift so that my back is to Scott, and quietly say, "Scott, you been listening?"

I watch my dad's face move from frustration to disbelief to acceptance, and know that Scott must have given some signal. My dad sighs again. "Let's get this figured out."

* * *

After school, Scott, Isaac, and I head to the only place we know to go when we're stuck for a solution – Deaton's.

He gives us horse tranquilizers. "Whoever's shooting will need to be a damn good shot."

"Allison's a perfect shot," Scott says.

"She used to be," Isaac interjects.

"She can do it," Scott defends.

"If we manage to find the thing."

"Okay, what is the point of him?" I say, frustrated. "Seriously - what is his purpose? Aside from the persistent negativity and the scarf? What's up with the scarf, anyway? It's sixty-five degrees out."

"Look, maybe I'm asking the question here that no one wants to ask," Isaac continues stubbornly. "How do we turn a coyote back into a girl, when she hasn't been a girl for eight years?"

"I can do it," Scott says after a beat. He explains his theory – both Peter and Deucalion have forced him to change into and out of his wolf form, just by roaring as Alphas. Deaton's not buying it, though, and with good reason. Scott's never really been that great at the whole Alpha thing.

"That's why you called Derek first," I say. "To ask for help. Where the hell is Derek, anyway?"

Scott shrugs. "I haven't heard back from him since the Nemeton. I could try it on my own, but right now I'm too scared to even turn into just a werewolf. "

"We need a real Alpha," I say, scrubbing my hand across my face. Scott looks at me, offended. "You know what I mean – an Alpha who can do Alpha things. And Alpha who can do Alpha things, you know, get it…"

"Up?" Isaac offers, helpfully, and I'm once again seized by the irrational urge to assault someone.

"Great!" Scott says. "I'm an Alpha with performance issues."

"Is there anyone else besides Derek who could help?" Deaton asks, trying to bring us back to the point of the conversation.

"The twins?" I venture. Deaton explains that Jennifer broke their Alpha-ness when she almost killed them, but that's not what I'm getting at. "They might know how to do it, though."

"No one's seen them for weeks," Scott points out.

"Well, actually, that's not totally true," I say, pulling my phone out of my pocket and pressing the number to speed-dial a certain fiery redhead. I ignore the fact that I can only identify her contact record by the picture – the words next to it read "RNAYI DALTIM."

"Stiles," her voice sighs into the phone. "You're interrupting a perfectly supernatural-free night of pampering."

"I know, Lyds, and I'm sorry," I say, turning my back to Isaac, who's making smoochy faces, and Scott, who looks astonished that Lydia even picks up my calls. "I've got a favor to ask. And you're not going to like it."

* * *

After a disastrous attempt to get Aiden and Ethan to teach Scott how to control his Alpha form, the five of us – me, Lydia, Scott, Allison, and Isaac – wind up somewhere we've been all too often recently: parked by the edge of the preserve, weapons ready, preparing to take on an enemy we really don't know that much about. Isaac is being overly kind to Allison – something must have happened when they were getting the tranquilizer gun ready. I wonder, not for the first time, which of us got the worst bargain with our side effects.

The first shot startles all of us into silence, and within seconds Scott, Isaac, and Allison take off into the woods. I immediately call my dad, who explains that coyote-Malia got into the Tate house and took that stupid doll.

"It took the doll again?" I exclaim, exasperated. Lydia watches me carefully, listening in on one side of the conversation. "What the hell is so important about that doll?"

"I don't know, Stiles, but listen," my dad says. I'm half paying attention as he explains that Tate's put traps out all over the woods, and that he's out in the trees with a rifle, but most of my brain is on overdrive somewhere else. The doll, the stupid doll – why would Malia leave the safety of the preserve, go all the way to the school, then all the way back to Tate's house, for a stupid, half-ripped apart doll?

I absentmindedly promise my dad that we'll be safe, then hang up. I go to show Lydia the picture I took of Malia and her sister back when Scott and I crept around the Tate house, and it's when Lydia points out that Malia's younger sister is the one holding the doll that everything crashes into place.

"It's the doll," I say excitedly, and Lydia looks at me like I may have finally lost it for good. "It's…the doll?"

"What about the doll?" Lydia asks.

"It's the _doll_," I repeat, and I grab Lydia's hand and start to tow her through the woods. I call Scott with my other hand and explain to Lydia at the same time as I talk to Scott's voicemail. "It isn't Malia's doll – it's her younger sister's. She's trying to take it back to the scene of the car crash. It's like taking flowers to a grave. That's all she's trying to do, just take the doll back for her little sister."

As I hang up, Lydia calls out my name, fear plain in her voice. I turn slowly to see Lydia's perfectly booted foot standing on the trigger plate of a bear trap. I scramble over to her, skidding to my knees in the dirt next to the trap.

"Stiles, look for the warning label," she says, visibly trying not to shake or cry. "On the bottom."

"Why the hell would they put instructions on the bottom of a trap?" I grumble.

"Because animals can't read!" Lydia snaps. _Glad to see she hasn't lost her temper. _

I clear some leaves away and press my shoulder into the ground. It doesn't take long to locate the bright red label, but the letters swim themselves out of order and I'm almost one hundred percent sure that there are no words in the English language that start with three T's in a row. My heart starts pounding in my chest – I'm going to be the reason Lydia Martin loses a perfect, ivory-skinned leg.

"Lydia, we've got a problem," I say, slowly looking up at her. "I can't read, either."

She looks down at me, tears shining brightly in her eyes. "You don't need the instructions," she says, her voice starting to pitch into hysteria. "When is the last time you ever used the instructions, am I right? You don't need them, because you are too smart to waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out. Stiles, you're the one who _always_ figures it out. So you can do it. Figure. It. Out."

Some part of me knows that she's just saying this to bolster me up. She's trying to make me feel more confident so that I don't screw this up, and I know it. Lydia Martin is never this nice to anyone. Funny thing is, even when you know you're being manipulated, that doesn't mean it doesn't work on you. The warmth of the compliment – and the fact, really, because I _do_ tend to figure these weird supernatural connections out pretty well – fights through the rising panic and illegible letters.

I settle back to the dirt and push more leaves out of the way, exposing the trap's mechanisms. Really, this is kind of like playing with K'nex or Legos when I was little – one piece triggers another piece triggers another piece triggers pointed metal shearing Lydia's bone in half – ooookay, let's not go down that road.

My fingers settle on a wheel-like knob that looks like it latches to the catch that Lydia's stepped on. I read somewhere once that these plates have adjustable levels of sensitivity – you don't want a rabbit to trigger one when you're trying to catch a bear. So if I can change the sensitivity so it'll only respond to something heavier than 110 pounds of feisty banshee, she should be okay. Right?

"Okay," I breathe, making eye contact with her one last time. "Okay, here we go. Ready?"

I don't give her time to respond – I just twist the knob as far as I can with one turn of my wrist, grab Lydia's arm and throw myself sideways to drag her off the plate, and she falls into my arms as the trap snaps shut on empty air.

* * *

Later, we catch each other up on our individual adventures while Malia showers and gets dressed at the Sheriff's station. We all heard Scott's Alpha roar, and the fact that Malia's a teenage girl taking a shower as opposed to a dead coyote is tribute to the fact that he's managed to shut the door in his mind. Isaac, all healed from his own run-in with a trap, sings Allison's praises, and the knocked-out Tate recovering at his home proves that she, too, has shut her door. Lydia tells everyone that I'm all fixed, too, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I was able to get her leg out of the trap, but I didn't actually overcome my issue.

Scott couldn't transform, but he did to help Malia – and he's not seeing shadows of himself with claws and fangs anymore. Allison couldn't keep her hands steady, but she did to take down Tate – and she's not seeing her dead aunt anymore, either.

Me? I couldn't read, and I still can't. Out in the woods, I was able to figure out a way around it to save Lydia, but I still couldn't actually make the letters act like letters. And I'm still not completely convinced that I'm awake.

When everyone else has gone home, I go with my dad to return Malia to her father. I watch them hug, crying happy tears, and catch sight of my own reflection in the side mirror, right above the "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" warning.

I jump in my seat, waiting for the letters to swim out of order, but they don't. They stay firmly in place, plain English, easy to read, easy to understand. I let out a huge sigh and smile maybe the first real smile I've had in a week.

"What up, buddy?" My dad says, climbing back into the car. "You look…happy."

I grin at him. I haven't explained the whole door-open-in-mind fiasco to him, but maybe now I won't have to. "Nothing. I am happy. It's just…it's nice to have a happy ending for once, you know? To help put a family back together."

He gives a little smile, too. "I know what you mean. We get to put a tally in the _Win _column tonight, and we've been doing an awful lot of losing lately."

He shifts the car into gear and we rumble towards home.

"It feels like things might be turning around," I say quietly, after a few quiet minutes. "After everything that happened with Ms. Blake and Deucalion and the Nemeton…I really didn't think that we'd all be okay."

"But we are," my dad says clearly. "Everyone's got some baggage to carry after a mess like that, but we're okay."

"Boyd died. And Erica."

My dad turns into our driveway and kills the engine. "I know, son, and that's a damn shame. But we're still here. And we will keep on still being here, and _that's_ a tally in the _Win _column, too. Now come on inside, I'm starving. Let's order a pizza."

"Veggie pizza only! And salad first!" I shout out the window at his retreating back, struggling to free my backpack from where one of the straps is tangled around a cupholder. "What the hell is…"

My voice trails off as I wrap my hand tighter around the backpack, only to realize that something's not quite right with my hand. I carefully extricate the bag and my arm and twist back around to the front seat, holding my left hand up so that the porch light illuminates it from behind.

"One. Two. Three. Four." I gulp a huge breath of air, blood starting to rush to my head. "Five. Six."

I wake up.


	3. Galvanize

Galvanize

I wake up, and I'm not me. Or I am, but I'm not _just_ me – there is someone else, there is something else here in my head with me, and it's driving me through the school like I'm a person-shaped car, and I watch my hands unlock that door and inside I am screaming, _screaming_, but this has got to just be a dream, just another dream-within-a-dream, I'm already having trouble remembering the details of how I got to school in the first place…

* * *

The phone rings five or six times before a sleepy Scott finally picks up.

"Get your ass down here, now!" I order. "We have a job to do."

"Dude, I'm already in bed! And aren't we getting a little old for this?"

"We do this for Coach!" I protest, stalking around Greenburg's rank lacrosse pads.

"I thought we did this _to _Coach."

"Whatever, okay, you know he needs this! He lives for this stuff, you know – he loves it."

"But it's the middle of the night."

I brace the flashlight between my teeth while I pull my locker open and rummage around. "It's 12:15, actually, which means it's after midnight and is officially Mischief Night-slash-Day. And, by a perfectly awesome coincidence, also Coach's birthday. So if you are not down here in five seconds, I will destroy you, okay? And I mean five, four, three, two –"

I turn from my locker directly into Scott, all glowing-red-eyes and lurking-in-the-shadows. I yelp something distinctly unmanly and hit the ground as Scott grins a little shit-eating grin and says, "One."

"I hate you."

"So you've said," he says, offering a hand to help me up. "What's the plan?"

I smile my own shit-eating grin and pull a handful of screwdrivers, a power drill, and a roll of wrapping paper out of my bag. "The plan, my friend, is careful deconstruction of Coach's office."

He follows me down the hall to our Economics classroom, and through to the back office Coach uses when he's pretending to be a teacher. I hand him a screwdriver and point to one of the silly motivational posters. "Start there. I'm going to take the bolts of out his chair."

Scott rolls his eyes but goes to work, and we pass the better part of an hour in near silence, just enjoying being around each other and doing something that normal teenagers do for once. We still haven't bounced back completely, but we're getting there, one day a time, and tonight – rigging Coach's office to pretty much fall apart as soon as he walks in – it feels like we may stand a chance of being normal again one day.

Or, at least, surviving high school.

Scott drops the last screw into the box on Coach's desk, and I cover it with a lid topped by a garish bow. We walk cautiously out of the office and head out to the parking lot.

"So, what's going on with you and the new girl?" I ask as we climb into my Jeep. Scott ran here, but a ride home is probably a good idea at nearly two in the morning.

"What're you talking about?" He says, keeping his face studiously blank.

I roll my eyes. "Don't even try, dude. I've seen you talking to her in between classes, and I know it's not texts from Isaac making you grin like an idiot at your phone. Unless it is Isaac, in which case, hey, more power to you – "

"It's not Isaac," he interrupts, and I give him a pointed look as I pull out of the lot. "It's early, okay? And I saved her from getting attacked by Malia, and I don't want her to get those feelings…confused, you know?"

"Plus there's the fact that every few weeks you morph into a giant wolf and run through the preserve, howling your allegiance to the moon."

Scott gives me a look that's murderous enough without the added Alpha-red flash. "Yeah. There's that."

We drive in silence for a minute.

"What about you?" Scott asks suddenly. "Lydia seemed pretty grateful that you pulled her leg out of that trap."

I shrug. "It's not…it's not really like that anymore. I mean, yeah, I still love the girl, and I do care about her, but it's just not…I think we're both realizing that having the friends we have and being what we are makes us pretty similar."

I ease to a stop in front of Scott's house, and he looks at me appraisingly. "Really? You honestly think that you're over Lydia Martin?"

"Over her?" I snort. "No one gets over that level of perfection, Scott. They merely accept that they're fighting a losing battle and move on."

Scott laughs, shoves at my shoulder (_that's going to leave a mark_), and clambers out of the Jeep. "See you in the morning?"

"Mischief Day!" I call across the lawn. "The most sacred day of our year! Come prepared, McCall!"

* * *

Mischief Day starts in earnest with a visit from the twin hellspawn, Aiden and Ethan, outside the school first thing in the morning. I take my place next to Scott in time to hear one of them say, "We just want to talk."

"That's kind of a change of pace for you guys!" I say. "Seeing as you're usually just, you know, hurting, maiming, killing…"

"You need a pack," says the one wearing a blue shirt, choosing not to respond to my taunts. I arbitrarily decide that this one's Aiden. "And we need an Alpha."

"Yeahhhhh," I say. "Absolutely not. That's hilarious, though."

"You came to us for help. We helped," offers green shirt.

"You beat his face into a bloody pulp," I argue. "That's not helping. In my opinion, that's actually counter-productive."

"Why would I say yes?" Scott asks, speaking up for the first time.

"We'd add strength. We'd make you more powerful," tries Aiden. "There's no reason to say no."

I'm pretty sure my reaction to that particular statement reads all over my face, but it's Isaac who answers, casually strolling up from wherever it is he keeps his pessimistic, scarf-wearing self these days. "I can think of one. The two of you holding Derek's claws while Kali impaled Boyd. In fact," he adds, turning to Scott, "I don't know why we're not impaling them right now."

For once, I agree with him. Aiden lets his fangs and innocent-killer blue eyes slip out with a growl. "Wanna try?"

Isaac smiles like he's been waiting for this all day, but Scott grabs his wrist and pulls him back. They make eye contact, and I can practically read the messages they're sending across whatever werewolf-y bond they have – _not in public_.

"I'm sorry," Scott says aloud. "But they don't trust you. And neither do I." He leads us past the two of them into school, Isaac lingering just a second longer than he absolutely needs to.

The minute we set foot inside a school, a roll of toilet paper comes flying at my head. I dodge, barely, with a "Hey, that's my face!" sent after the thrower. God, I love Mischief Day.

"Good decision, man, good Alpha decision," I say, clapping Scott on the chest as we walk through halls full of toilet paper and spitballs and shaving cream.

"Well, I hope so."

"No, you know so." We stop at my locker, which I open with no problems – _take that, supernaturally-induced-temporary dyslexia - _ and I start removing my supplies when I catch Scott staring over my shoulder. "What are you looking at?"

"Me?"

"You," I confirm. "You looking at her?" I nod toward the new girl, Kira, at her locker a few doors down.

"Her? Who her?"

"_Her _her," I say, pulling a carton of eyes out of my backpack. "Kira. The one we talked about last night. You like her."

"No," Scott says immediately, then backtracks. "I mean – yeah, yeah, she's okay, she's new."

"So? Ask her out." I shut my locker.

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"_Right _now?"

"Yes, right now!" I sling an arm around Scott's shoulders as we walk down the hall. "Scott, I don't think you get it yet. You're an Alpha, okay? You're the apex predator. Everyone wants you, you know? You're like the hot girl that every guy wants."

Scott stares at me, astonishment in every line of his face. "I'm the hot girl?"

Isaac, with his typical excellent timing, picks this moment to join the conversation.

"You are the hottest girl," I confirm, before spinning on my heel. I'm going to be _so _late for class. I'm still within earshot to hear Scott repeat "I'm the hot girl!" and get additional confirmation from his confused but hopelessly loyal Beta, and I snicker my way through the hall. We may have narrowly avoided the world ending several times in the last year, but it's a still a guy's duty to try to get his best friend laid.

* * *

"Son of a bitch!" Coach's voice drifts through the walls as a perfect segue into Econ. I can't keep smug look of happiness off my face, and Scott clearly can't either – Coach must have walked perfectly into our trap. He slams through the door and chucks a pencil at the ground. "Mischief Night! Devil's Night! I don't care what you call it, you little punks are evil. You think it's _funny_, every Halloween my house gets egged? A man's house is supposed to be his castle!"

He slaps a hand down on Scott's desk, but the twitters of laughter keep bubbling up. "Oh, and this," he says, reaching for another wrapped box on his desk – one I'm not responsible for. "Are we going to do this again? I don't think so." He drops the box to the floor and stomps on it, and something distinctly shatters against the tile. He crouches to pick up the pieces of a now unusable mug with his face on it, and reads the card – "Happy Birthday. Love, Greenburg."

The rest of the hour passes without incident – well, almost. Someone did put wads of chewed gum on the inside handle of the door, so that when Coach goes to open it and let us out at the end of the period, he comes away with fingers coated in JuicyFruit. We make it all the way to fifth period with these sorts of minor interruptions, but it only takes a single noise to ruin an otherwise perfectly innocent day of pranks.

The overhead alarm system blares into life during passing time, announcing that we're once again in a Code Blue, someone or something hostile on school grounds, stay in your classroom and lock the doors. Most of the students scatter, heading into the nearest available classroom, but there's a lack of urgency – honestly, this happens so often at BHHS that a lot of the terror has gone out of it. My dad catches my elbow just before I head into Mr. Albertson's room and tugs me along, filling me in on the background.

"Wait a minute, _the _William Barrow? The Shrapnel Bomber? Spotted nearby?"

My dad stops, glances around the hall to make sure we're not being overheard, and says, "A little bit closer than nearby, actually."

Before he can continue explaining, I see Scott's dad coming down the staircase, principal and campus security guards trotting along behind him. "How do we get down to the basement?" he's asking. "I need to know where every entrance is. I don't want anybody coming in or out of the school."

I look back at my dad. "Dad, what's really going on here?"

My dad sighs, then pulls me into an empty office, shutting the door behind us. "A few students reported seeing a strange-looking man in a hospital gown entering the school and heading into the basement," he says. "We obviously don't know for sure, but Agent McCall wants to make sure we're taking the necessary precautions. The thing is, Stiles…I don't think McCall really knows what he's getting himself into."

"What do you mean?" I ask, the words tripping over each other in my haste to get the question out. "What else is going on?"

"I talked to Melissa – you know, Scott's mom. She did his pre-op evaluation, and she said that Barrow said he blew up that bus because the kids on it had glowing eyes."

I stare back at him, unable to stop my jaw from hanging open. "Glowing eyes? Like werewolf-glowing eyes?"  
"I didn't really have time to ask for the specifics, Stiles, the man was wheeled into surgery, exploded a tumor of flies all over the surgical team, killed half of them, and then took off!"

I hold up my hands to pacify him. "Okay, okay. So what can we do to help?"

A series of text messages later, I've assembled the Wonder Squad near one of the entrances to the basement.

"Did you say flies?" Lydia asks, interrupting my slightly rambly background story. "All day I've been hearing this sound – it's like this buzzing."

"Like the sound of flies?" Allison prompts.

"Exactly like the sounds of flies."

"Okay, well, can you follow it?" I ask. "No, don't look at me like that – we're still getting a handle on what exactly your banshee, harbinger-of-death powers are. It's a logical question."

Lydia sighs, flipping a lock of hair perfectly back out of her face. "It's too faint down here. Anyway, what would be the plan even if I could follow it? The recently recovered huntress, the attention-deficient human, and the emotionally stunted werewolf are going to take on a guy who straps bombs to his chest? Where's Scott?"

I drag my phone out of my pocket – sure enough, Scott hasn't responded to my texts. "I'll go find him. You three – Lydia, try to focus. Allison, try not to let anyone get killed. And Isaac…be helpful?" I plead. Without waiting to see if my instructions will be carried through, I'm sprinting back up the stairs and out into the crowded hallway – the school administration must have lifted the immediate lockdown for some terribly-thought-out reason.

I skid into the History hallway and find Scott creeping outside of Yukimura's classroom.

"Dude, where the hell have you been?" I demand, my sneakers squeaking loudly against the tile.

Lydia comes hurrying up from the other direction – _clearly_ not trying to focus her banshee powers – and blurts out, "The police are leaving. Why are they leaving?"

"The police?" Scott echoes, a few steps behind.

"They must have cleared the building and grounds, which means he's not here," I say, wheels in my brain spinning fast.

"Who? What are you guys-?"

"He has to be here." Lydia cuts Scott off. "That sound, the buzzing I've been hearing. It's getting louder."

"How loud?" I ask, almost not wanting to know the answer.

Lydia just closes her eyes, pain evident in her clenched jaw and the tendons standing out on her neck.

"What the hell is going on?" Scott demands.

"Check your phone next time," I snap. I take Lydia's hand and lead her out of the school, trying to ignore the little whimpers of distress coming from her every few steps. Scott trails behind us, letting out "No way!" and "Dude!" as he slowly catches up on our group text.

My dad, Mr. McCall, and a group of deputies are heading away from the building. I leave Lydia by one of the big pillars out front, assuring her I'll be back in a second, then sprint after them, calling for my dad.

"Yeah?" he says, turning his head to me but not slowing down.

"You can't leave yet," I say, slightly out of breath.

"We've got an eyewitness that put Barrow by the train station," he says, and McCall barks for him to get a move on.

"Whoa whoa whoa, Dad, please, Lydia said that he's still here."

My dad takes a few steps closer to me, his face intense. "Did she see him?"

I wince. "Not exactly, no. Or not at all, really, but she has a feeling! A supernatural feeling."

His face goes blank, and he looks over my shoulder to where Lydia is leaning up against a wall, looking extremely un-supernatural in her skirt and pug sweater. "Lydia wasn't on the chessboard!"

"Yeah, well, she is now," I say, momentarily distracted by wondering what chess piece I'd assign to a forseer-of-death.

"Kanima?" My dad asks, throwing out one of the buzzwords he's shockingly comfortable with.

"Uh…banshee," I correct, wincing again.

He looks up at the sky. "God, Stiles, really?"

"I know, I know how it sounds, but basically it means that she can sense when someone's close to death."

My dad's voice drops to a whisper. "Can she sense that I'm about to kill you?"

"Huh." I'm momentarily taken aback. "I don't know."

Lydia gives us both a sarcastic wave and a smile.

"Look," my dad says, "I'm not saying I don't believe you. But right now, I'm taking eye witness over banshee." He starts edging away from me. "We're leaving a few deputies here. The school's on lockdown until three o'clock – no one goes in, no one goes out. Buddy, that's the best I got right now, it's the best I can give you, Stiles."

"You're leaving me here!" I shout after him as he jogs away to catch up with Scott's dad. "That is not the b- that is the worst!"

Lydia comes up behind me and grabs my hand. "C'mon, we need to get back inside – Scott texted."

"Oh of course he did, _now _he'll pay attention to his phone," I grumble, allowing myself to be pulled along into one of the empty classrooms along the back of the school.

Scott, Isaac, and Allison are already here, along with the hellspawn twins – and it might be my imagination, but Lydia seems to blush furiously at seeing Aiden.

"Aw, come on!" I complain, throwing my arms in their general direction. "These two? We talked about this!"  
"We need their help, Stiles," Scott says evenly. He holds up a plastic bag that I hadn't noticed until now. "My mom brought the clothes Barrow was wearing when he came to the hospital. With them, we've got twice as many noses to search for Barrow, if he's really still here."

"He's here," Lydia protests. "I _know_ he is, I can _feel _it."

"If he is, we'll find him," Scott assures.

"I should go home," Allison says. "Check the Bestiary for explanations about the flies."

"Good idea," Scott says. "The rest of us – me, Isaac, Ethan, and Aiden will take the basement, since that's where the cops thought he was. Me and Isaac will start at the west end, you guys start at the east, and we'll meet in the middle."

"The boiler room," I offer. "I saw a blueprint of the school once – the boiler room is smack dab the middle."

"Fine," Scott nods. "Stiles, you and Lydia start upstairs. Just look for anything suspicious, and call if you get into trouble."

We dispatch so quickly and efficiently that I half expect us to put our hands in and yell "Break!" before taking off on our separate missions. It seems that Scott's actually turning out to be a half-decent Alpha.

So long as none of us get killed this afternoon, that is.

"The Bestiary is literally a thousand pages long," Allison says, pushing the window open. "If I'm going to find anything about flies coming out of people's bodies, it could take me all night."

"The word in archaic Latin for _fly _is _busca_," Lydia says as Allison somehow manages to maneuver her way out the tiny window, in a skirt, while still looking graceful.

"Got it," Allison says, and then she's gone.

Lydia turns to me. "Where do we start?"

I check the clock – 2:40. "Upstairs. Like Scott said. C'mon, we've got to go."

We creep around hallways and use Lydia's compact to check corners – the last thing we need is to get caught by a teacher and harangued back to class. We clear the occupied classrooms and start searching one of the big, open art rooms. Lydia keeps making me repeat the plan, the bits and pieces about the guys being in the basement and meeting in the boiler room, and I'm getting frustrated with her complete lack of helping when she makes a plain statement that stops me in my tracks.

"All of the wolves – all of the ones with glowing eyes – are in the basement at the boiler room?"

Comprehension dawns on me like a ton of bricks. "Oh my God. An engineer could use a boiler room to blow up the whole school."

Lydia nods and swallows hard. "We have to get them out of there."

"Yeah," I say, "We have to get _everyone_ out."

"How do we do that?"

I think for a second, but the idea's already there, half-formed in my brain, and I can't stop the smirk spreading across my face. I sprint into the hall to the first fire alarm I can find, take a steadying breath, and slam the trigger. A piercing siren splits the air, and I grin continuously as students begin to file out of their classrooms and make for the doors – if there was ever a fitting time for this, it's Mischief Day. Lydia's face, however, drops in the same instant I feel hot breath on the back of my neck, and I know that slightly whistling nasal exhale all too well. Sure enough, Coach is there, standing all too close for comfort. He grabs my ear – people still actually do that? – and pulls me out of the school, ranting the whole way.

"Pulling the fire alarm on Mischief Night is one thing. Doing it when there's a mass murderer spotted nearby is insane!" He releases me once we're outside, looking scarily close to having an apoplectic fit. "If I were four years younger, I'd punch you!"

That one's lost on even me. "What? Coach, that doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, well, it does to me!" He exclaims, stalking away to terrorize someone else. I'm still staring after him, bewildered, when Lydia spots our werewolves across the quad and tugs me over to them.

"We didn't find anything," Aiden says as soon as we're close.

"Not even a scent," Scott adds.

"It's 3 o'clock, so school's over," I say slowly. "If there was a bomb, wouldn't he have set it off by now?"

"Does that mean everybody's safe?" asks Ethan.

"I don't know," Lydia responds. Her eyes dart around, searching for something. "I just…I don't know."

"Scott!" Someone calls. All six of us turn to see our history teacher, Mr. Yukimura, heading toward us. "I'm glad I caught you. Are you free for dinner tonight?"

The look on Scott's face is absolutely priceless. Lydia stomps on my foot in an effort to get me to stop laughing into my fist.

"Oh! Well, I, uh…" Scott stutters. "I don't usually have dinner with my teachers…"

Yukimura laughs. "I'm not inviting you over as your history teacher, Scott, I'm inviting you over as a grateful father. You saved Kira's life from that coyote."

"Oh, well, that was really nothing," Scott says, the back of his neck turning bright red. "She probably would've been fine anyway…"

"He'd love to!" I interrupt, stepping up next to him. "He was just saying that he didn't have other plans after work, right, Scott?"

"Work?" Repeats Yukimura, looking interested.

"He assists at the animal clinic over on Monroe Street," I volunteer, patting Scott on the shoulder. "He's a very responsible man, balancing work, lacrosse, _and _keeping his grades up."

Yukimura nods appraisingly. "I see. Well then, Scott, we'll see you for dinner around 7?"

Scott nods, a little pale, and calls a faint "Thank you" after Yukimura's retreating figure.

"Jesus, Stilinski, are you sure you're not the one who wants to date McCall?" Aiden snorts. "Such a _responsible _young man."

"Shut up," Scott says, not putting much feeling into it. "Everyone just…I don't know, go home. Get some sleep. We'll deal with all of this again tomorrow."

The pack splits up reluctantly. Lydia trails along after me to the Jeep, still with a distant, haunted look in her eyes that makes me worry about her.

"Hey," I say gently, startling her out of whatever thoughts had been holding her. "Do you want to come over later? My dad's going to be working late with this whole disaster. We can make dinner and do homework and just not be, you know, alone."

She looks up at me, all bright eyes and perfect skin and a sadness that seems to have taken root somewhere deep, deep within her. "I'm fine."

"Oh, I know! No, I know you're totally fine, I wasn't say that you weren't totally fine, I'm just saying that I'm not totally fine, not all the time anyway, and sometimes it's nice to just have someone else be around when you're not totally fine and having that other person around can help to make things more…fine," I finish lamely, sucking in a giant breath after that mouthful.

She gives me a once-over. "Fine. 7 o'clock. I'll bring what we need to make chicken parmesan."

* * *

I wake up, and he's back. It's back. The thing that isn't me, the one that's wearing my face and piloting me around, and I suddenly remember this morning and unlocking the chemicals closet. I suddenly remember everything this creature, this non-Stiles has done in the past and the sheer, overwhelming atrocity of it has me screaming again. The kind of scream that would leave my throat raw, but this one won't because outside, I am completely calm. Outside, my hand smoothly leaves three numbers on the chalkboard.

Inside, I am being relegated to a tiny box. Inside, I am being tucked away into a dusty corner, ignored, pinioned into silence by the weight of the horrible things I've done –

No, _no_, not the things I've done, the things _it _has done –

_Let me in, Stiles._

* * *

"What do the different colored strings mean?" Lydia asks after dinner, when I introduce her to my investigation wall. Walls, really – it expanded around the corner when Malia Tate came into play.

"They're different stages of the investigation," I explain. "So, like, green is solved, yellow is to be determined, blue's just…pretty."

"What does red mean?"

I wince yet again today. "Unsolved."

"You only have red on the board."

"Yes. I'm aware. Thank you."

"Did you get detention for pulling the alarm?"

"Yeeeep. Every day this week." I bounce a permanent marker against my cheek, reevaluating one of the strings. "It's okay, though. We were on to something."

"Even though we couldn't find any proof of Barrow being there?" Something in Lydia's voice makes me turn around, and I walk to my bed and start gently untangling her fingers from the red string – she's wrapped herself in it so tightly that her fingertips are the same bright red as the string itself.

"Hey, Lydia. You've been right every time something like this has happened. Okay? So don't start doubting yourself now."

"No scent," she says, shaking her head. "No bomb. And I got you in trouble."

"Okay, okay," I say soothingly. "Barrow was there, all right? You knew it. You _felt_ it. And look, if you wanted to, I'd go back to that school and I'd search all night just to prove it."

Lydia gives me a tentatively smile, and I bounce the end of the marker off my cheek again. Even through the cap, I can slightly smell the marker's – _oh_. _Oh, crap._

"Get up," I say abruptly. "Get up, now – we're going to the school."

I refuse to speak on the way to school, still trying to work out the details in my head. It's only when we actually walk into the main chemistry classroom and Lydia again asks, "So what are we looking for?" that I'm ready to respond.

I push open the door to the chemicals closet and give myself an internal high-five – part one of the theory, confirmed.

"That was supposed to be locked," Lydia says, following me into the small, dimly-lit room.

"Yeah, I know," I say. "Notice anything else?"

Lydia sighs and says sarcastically, "It smells like chemicals?"

I don't dignify that with a response – I just turn on my phone's flashlight app and start looking for part two of my theory while I wait for Lydia to catch on. For a girl with an IQ over 170, she can be surprisingly slow to piece together the many magical mysteries of Beacon Hills.

"They wouldn't have been able to catch his scent," she says after a few seconds.

I still don't respond. We need some evidence that Barrow was actually here, in this room, or the entire theory falls apart.

Evidence obligingly presents itself when I do a sweep of the floor and find a small patch of bloodstained tile, dotted with shards of glass and what look like discarded staples. "He was here," I sigh. "Performing very minor surgery on himself. You were right."

"Then why don't I feel good about this?"

"Probably because he was here to kill somebody," I rationalize.

"But who?"

"That's what we've got to figure out." I push myself back to standing and head out into the main classroom. "Spread out, start looking for…anything." I rummage around under a few of the lab table, not sure what I'm looking for, but sure I'll know it when I see it. Lydia, meanwhile, walks toward the front of the classroom as if in a trance. I see what she's staring at – three numbers on the chalkboard – and momentarily keep searching. "Lydia, what are those?"

"Atomic numbers," she says, and again there's something odd in her voice that makes me drop what I'm doing and circle around the teacher's desk to stand next to her.

"Is it a formula?" I ask. Chem's never been my strong suit.

"Not really," she says. "Nineteen's potassium, fifty-three's iodine, eighty-eight's radium. The first two make potassium iodide?" She snatches up a piece of chalk and writes the corresponding symbol next to each number.

"Potassium's _K_?" I read, incredulous.

"From kalium. The scientific, neo-Latin name." She continues to write, and I stare at her – only Lydia Martin has this knowledge just floating around in her head, under all the perfectly coiffed hair. With all three elements identified, she steps back from the chalkboard – and I have my phone out with a call to Scott running in less than half a second.

"Scott," I pant into the phone as I skid around a corner, racing to my car, Lydia trying to keep up behind me. "Scott, you really need to start picking up the phone when I call. Listen, Barrow's after Kira – I'm not going to explain to your voicemail, just get her somewhere safe and call me back, _now_."

I throw myself into my Jeep and Lydia scrambles in next to me, just barely getting her seatbelt buckled before I'm tearing out of the parking lot.

"So, what, we've got another kanima situation going on here?" I ask, thinking out loud as I speed down residential streets while Lydia navigates to the Yukimura's on her phone. "Someone's controlling Barrow, sending him messages about who to kill?"

"I don't know, Stiles. Second right."

"And why Kira? She's only been here for all of a month – guess it makes since, seeing as we live on a hellmouth with a beacon for supernatural shit and all that, but why Kira?"

"I don't know, Stiles. Left after the stop sign."

My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. "This was supposed to be over. We were supposed to get to go back to normal."

"They're three blocks down on the left. Your best friend is an Alpha werewolf, Stiles, and mine is from a long line of werewolf hunters. We left the possibility of 'normal' behind a year ago."

I screech to a halt when I see Scott's bike, and his prone figure on the ground next to it. By the time we rush over to him, he's already stirring a bit – _thank God. _ I repeat his name until he really comes to, sitting up with a gasp.

"Barrow, he – he took Kira!"

"We know," I say, offering a hand to help him up. "He was after her the whole time."

"So what do we do now?" Lydia asks.

Scott scrubs a hand through his hair, accidently smearing blood across his forehead from the now-healed head wound, and uses the other hand to pull his phone out of a pocket. "I'm calling Isaac. He's with Allison – maybe they found something useful."

That turns out to be a no-go, though, and we're back to the three of us standing under a streetlamp with no direction.

"I knew he was there," Lydia says. "How did I know that?"

"Because you heard the flies, right?" I say.

"What do you hear now?" Scott prompts.

Lydia's eyes drop to the ground, searching, focusing. "Nothing." She flicks her eyes to me and starts pacing. "I feel like I can do this, but I don't know what to do. It's – it's like it's on the tip of my tongue, and I don't know how to trigger it! I swear to God – it literally makes me want to scream."

I take a few steps toward her. "Okay, then - scream. Lydia, _scream_."

Lydia sucks in a breath and lets it out in a single, high-pitched noise that seems to tear clear through my brain and a distinctly not-Stiles voice in the back of my head says _A banshee, hmm? Interesting…_ but before I have time to deal with whatever the hell _that_ was, Lydia's staring up at the streetlamp like it holds all the answers to the universe.

"It's not flies," she says, and when she turns around sharply both Scott and I take a step back. "It's electricity."

Electricity? "Wait a sec, Barrow was an electrical engineer," I say. "He worked at a power sub-station."

"What sub-station?" Scott asks.

"I don't know, how am I supposed to know that?" I demand, suddenly irritable. I pull my phone out and hit the speed dial to call my dad, holding it to my ear while it rings. "You know, Scott, I don't have your phone number so you can ignore me – first this morning at school, now today with Kira – hi, Dad! Listen, I need you to tell me what sub-station Barrow worked at when he was an engineer."

* * *

Five minutes later, we're pulling up in front of the station at Craxley and Tenth. "Okay," I say, letting myself out of the car and locking the door behind me. "Just wait here, okay? Wait for the cops to come – my dad said they should be here any minute."

"Me? Wait, why?" Lydia asks.

I've got literally a million reasons Lydia shouldn't come inside. About to take on a mass murderer, check. Heading into a creepy abandoned power station, check. Don't really have any backup yet, check. Don't actually have a plan, check. Overall, have basically no idea what's going on, check. We're only human, and I've only the one bat? Check. That last one's the one I call back at her as I take off into the building after Scott.


	4. Illuminated

We barely have time to get our stories straight, barely have time to get Kira to calm down enough to listen. I'm still reeling by the time my dad's deputies show up, bundle Scott, Kira, Lydia, and I into the backs of squad cars, and whisk us back to the Sheriff's station. I give the rehearsed answers to Deputy Gozeman on the drive while Lydia clings to my hand like it's the only thing keeping her from falling apart, all the while thankful that my ADHD-wired brain is more than capable of holding an external conversation completely independent from my actual thoughts.

I watched Kira absorb enough electricity to send the entire town – hell, possibly the entire county – into a blackout. What does that make her? Some sort of superhero? She just _stood_ there, sparks winding up her arms in rivers of flame, until picking up the broken power main and casually kinking it into a knot.

What is she?

My phone buzzes against my leg, and Lydia and I both go for our pockets at the same time. It's a new message in the pack's group text, from Allison.

Allison_: Isaac was attacked at my apartment._

Scott: _What? Is he okay?!_

Allison: _Seems fine, my dad had to trigger his healing by forcing him to change. _

My fingers fly over the screen. _What was it? Who did it?_

Allison: _No idea. Isaac just remembers figures all in black that came out of the shadows._

Lydia: _Can you find anything matching that description in the bestiary? _

Allison: _Maybe. Still making sure Isaac's okay before doing anything else._

Lydia and I trade looks across the back of the squad car as we pull into the Sheriff's station. Just what we need – mysterious figures, all in black, going after our werewolf friends again.

* * *

"So, what time did you get there?" Scott's dad asks me once he's got the four of us settled into chairs in my dad's office. My dad swivels back and forth slowly behind his desk.

"At the same time," I reply.

"At the same time as who?"

I point at Scott as he raises his hand. "Same time as me."

"By coincidence?" continues Agent McCall.

"What you mean, _coincidence_?" I say.

"I'm asking you," McCall says, clearly getting annoyed. It's been almost half an hour since the deputies gave their briefs and he started questioning us, and he's gotten practically nowhere. If Scott and I's refusal to be helpful is maybe driven just a smidge by our genuine hatred of this guy in addition to our need to protect our secrets and loved ones, well, who's the wiser? "The two of you arrived at the same time. Was that coincidence?"

"Are you asking me?" Scott asks, a perfect mask of honest confusion on his face.

"I think he's asking me," I say to Scott in a sidebar.

"I think he's asking both of you," Lydia contributes, and I can't help giving her a broad grin. Girl doesn't speak up much in front of authority, but when she does, it's a gem.

"Okay," McCall interrupts. "Let me answer the questions." I turn my grin to him, waiting for him to realize what he's just said. "Let me _ask_ the questions. Just so I have this absolutely clear. Barrow was hiding in a chemistry closet at the school. Someone left him a coded message on the blackboard, telling him to kill Kira. Then Barrow took Kira to a power substation and tied her up, with the intent of electrocuting her, which blacked out the entire town."

"Sounds about right," I confirm.

"How'd you know he'd take her to a power substation?"

I'm not entirely prepared for that one. I can't exactly explain Lydia's banshee senses or my dad's involvement without getting one or both of them in serious trouble. "Well, because he was an electrical engineer. So…where else would he take her?"

Agent McCall shoots me a look that I just barely remember from early childhood, and it's a look that quite clearly says he's getting sick of my shit. "That's one hell of a deduction there, Stiles."

My grin expands, if possible. "Yeah, well, what can I say? I take after my Pops. He's in law enforcement." I shoot my dad a wink around McCall's side, and he snorts into his hand to hide the chuckle.

"Stiles," my dad manages after a second. "Just answer the man."

I sigh. "We made a good guess."

McCall consults his notes, then shifts his line of questioning to Scott and Kira. "And what were the two of you doing? Before Barrow took Kira?"

Kira says "Eating sushi" at the exact same moment Scott says "Eating pizza." They then reverse their answers and again speak over one another. They ultimately chorus "Eating sushi and pizza," then breathe sighs of relief.

Aww. Young love.

McCall turns over his shoulder to my dad. "You believe this?"

"To be honest," my dad says, scrubbing a hand down the side of his face, "I haven't believed a word Stiles has said since he learned how to speak. But I think that these kids found themselves in the right place, at the right time. And that girl sitting there is very lucky for it."

I can practically see the frustration and barely-contained rage rolling off Scott's dad in waves. "Kira. Is that how you remember it?"

There's an expectant pause, when Scott, Lydia, my dad, Scott's dad, and myself all stare at Kira. She's the newest to this, the one with the least experience covering up the weirdness of Beacon Hills. One wrong word from her now could send everything tumbling to the ground.

"Yes," she finally says. "Could I get my phone back now?

Agent McCall heaves one last, dramatic sigh, and stands up. "Sorry, but no." He gestures through the windows for deputies to come in. "Deputies will take you all home. Kira, you'll need to fill out some paperwork first."

My dad gives me a quick hug (whispering, "I get the full story tonight at home" into my ear), then sends me out the door. I persuade Gozeman to just take me back to my Jeep, still at the power substation, then take the long way home.

* * *

"So, what is she?" My dad asks a few hours later, as we push aside the remnants of a late-night snack of apples and peanut butter (and beer for my dad, caffeine-free tea for me).

"I honestly don't know," I say, twirling a pad of Post-it notes under my finger. We've moved the chessboard into the kitchen, and I updated it to bring Lydia into play. I have Kira tagged as one of the castles, but have no idea where to place her.

He groans and gets up, clearing our plates. "Is she dangerous?"

I follow him to the sink, carrying a half-drained beer bottle and my empty mug. "I don't know that, either."

"She's just a kid," he says. "She can't be dangerous, she's just a kid."

"So's Malia," I say. "And Jackson, and Matt, and the hellspawn twins. Hell, even Allison, Scott, Lydia We're all dangerous, Dad. But I don't think any of us are kids anymore."

He pulls me suddenly into a fierce, tight hug. "You going to be able to sleep tonight?"

I shrug in his arms. "Dunno. It's only a few hours until dawn, I might just stay up."

He pulls back a little and looks at me critically. "That's not healthy, Stiles."

"I've got a week and a half of Trig homework to catch up on and a Physics quiz Friday," I say. "Take it up with my teachers. Besides," I continue, ducking away. "You know what happens when I try to sleep."

I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck as I clean up.

I don't sleep that night.

* * *

I wince against the sound of Coach patrolling the halls with a bullhorn. Not sleeping might mean that I don't have to wake up somewhere unexpected, but it also means that I'll spend the day grumpy and with a wicked headache.

"Just because there's no power, don't expect there to be no school!" Coach chants gleefully.

"That's a triple negative," I call after him as I yank my locker open. "Very impressive, Coach."

"Copy that."

As I pull my Physics book free, I jostle my keys from their perch on the edge of my locker and they fall to the ground. When I squat to grab them, my fingers settle over an unfamiliar shape, and I slowly unfold myself back to standing while examining the keyring intruder.

"Hello, how'd you get here?" I say, flipping through the other keys just to make sure I'm not going crazy. House key, McCall house key, Jeep key, gym locker key, key to Derek's loft…and this guy. Mystery key.

I'm distracted by Scott trying to charge past me towards Kira's locker at the end of the hall, and throw an arm around his chest to hold him back. "Nope – no, stop it, stop it."

"What?" Scott demands, gazing after Kira like a lovesick puppy. "I need to talk to her."

"No, you don't," I correct. "You need to remember that someone left a coded message telling Barrow to kill her."

"Which is why I need to talk to her."

"Scott, no _way_. Until we figure out if she's just another psychotic monster that's going to start murdering everybody, I vote against any and all interaction." I emphasize this last statement with a couple wild gestures.

"But what if she's like me?" Scott says, and for a second I almost let up. I remember what Scott was like when Peter first bit him, how afraid and out of control he was – and that was with me by his side, to share the load as best I could. Kira doesn't seem to have anyone.

But maybe that's what's going to make her dangerous.

"That girl walked through 1.21 gigawatts of electricity," I say firmly. "She's not like you."

"Two days ago you told me that I'm the hot girl," he whines. "The apex predator."

"You're still the hot girl, moron," I say. "But we don't know yet where Kira falls on the whole supernatural food chain. Know thy enemy, Scott."

"How can I know my enemy if you won't let me talk to her?"

"Stiles is right," Lydia agrees, joining us as we stare after Kira's retreating form. "We don't know anything about her. Finding information and getting unnecessarily close to her are two very different things."

"Fine, do your research," Scott concedes. "But if it turns out that she needs help, we're helping. No questions asked."

* * *

I wake up at the end of Bio, with my phone buzzing in my pocket and Mrs. Martin's hand on my shoulder.

"I'll let it slide this once," she says kindly, concern pinching her eyes, "because you've got an A in this class and looks like you haven't slept in a week. But don't make a habit of it, Stiles – and please try to get some rest."

"It's not – what?" I gape after her, pulling my phone free and answering it on autopilot. "Hello?"

"Stiles?" My dad's voice jolts me back into reality.

"Dad? Dad, what's going on? Is everything okay, are you hurt? Oh God, did someone die?"

"Stiles, calm down," he cuts across my babbling. "Everything's fine, you texted me something incoherent about keys this morning and I didn't get a chance to write back."

"Oh," I say, willing my heartbeat back to normal. I pin the phone between my ear and shoulder while I shove my things into my backpack, mouth a "thank you" to Mrs. Martin, and head to lunch. "Yeah, that. Did you put a new key on my keyring for something?"

I can hear him rolling his eyes through the phone. "Stiles, I've got a county-wide blackout causing collisions at every intersection. No, I did not sneak a new key onto your keyring this morning."

"Fine, fine," I say, cruising around a corner and nearly taking out a few freshmen girls. "Whoa, sorry – hey, what are you eating for lunch?"

"What?"

"I thought I just heard the crinkle of something that sounded suspiciously like a burger wrapper."

"Stiles…" My dad says, letting his voice trail off.

"And _then_ I thought, no. There's no way my beloved father would scorn the healthy lunch I so lovingly packed for him this morning in favor of a 2-dollar chemical patty guaranteed to clog his arteries and send him to an early grave. No _way_."

He sighs. "You're impossible."

"I love you too. See you tonight."

* * *

Scott catches up with me after school.

"Hey, man. I've got a favor to ask."

I squint up at him from where I'd settled against a tree outside the school to work on my AP English essay. "Why do I get the feeling this is going to get very illegal, very fast?"

He squats down in front of me. "We need to get Kira's phone back from the Sheriff's station."

"Why?" I scoff. "Not being able to text is just taking such a toll on her social life?"

Scott looks vastly uncomfortable. "There are some pictures on Kira's phone that...well, that she doesn't want anyone else to see."

I fix him with a look. "Scott. I was standing next to you last night while we watched Kira channel enough power to take out the eastern seaboard. We talked about you staying away from her this morning, and Lydia – banshee Lydia, with her danger and death-sensing powers – agreed. Unless you give me a really, really good reason to trust her, I can't help."

Scott shifts to be fully sitting. "I saw what she is. Today, during lunch. I still don't actually understand it, but it's like there's this creature made of light surrounding her."

He pulls out his phone and swipes to show me a picture – Kira, with lines of fire circling her. "I can't explain, Stiles, I just know that she isn't dangerous. Or that least that she isn't trying to be. I just think she needs help."

"It's a big risk, Scott," I say, handing the phone back to him.

"There are pictures of her like this on her phone," Scott says. "If my dad sees them – if any of the deputies do?"

I'm just opening my mouth again when Isaac strolls up, wearing a ridiculously heavy sweater despite the gorgeous, 70-degree weather. "What sort of pictures?"

Scott blushes to the tips of his ears. "Uh…naked ones."

Isaac practically dies laughing, but I'm still staring at my best friend. I may not have werewolf hearing, but I don't need to be able to check his heartbeat to tell when he's lying.

"_Later_," he mouths to me, then kicks Isaac's feet out from under him. "Jackass."

Isaac rolls around, covering himself in leaves and basking in the sunshine. "Sorry, oh Alpha mine. I just came over to see if you're going to the party tonight."

Scott and I trade blank looks. "What party?"

Isaac smirks. "Social calendars of slugs, honestly. Danny's throwing a blacklight party tonight at Derek's."

My jaw practically unhinges. "_Derek _is throwing a party?"

Isaac's face emotes more sass than even Jackson's, I swear. "Did I say that? No, I said that Danny's throwing a party at Derek's. Derek's out of town for a few days."

"Way to bury the lead! Where'd he go?" I ask.

Isaac sighs. "Stilinski, you're entirely missing the point. Tonight, we're being given the miraculous opportunity to forget that we're teenagers from broken homes with too much responsibility and dead friends and relatives."

"Weren't you attacked, like, less than 24 hours ago?" Scott asks.

"By an enemy we still don't know anything about?" I add.

"All the more reason to get drunk and try to forget just how much our lives truly suck," Isaac says.

Well. Can't argue with that logic.

* * *

At 9 o'clock, I meet Scott and Kira around back of the Sheriff's station and hand them proximity access cards. "Okay. This one'll get you into all the perimeter doors. This one is the evidence room, and this one is my father's office."

Scott accepts the cards, with some trepidation. "You didn't steal these, did you?"

"Nah, just cloned 'em using an RFID emulator," I say.

"Is that worse than stealing?"

_Not the time to have a crisis of conscience over breaking and entering, Scott. _"It's…smarter?"

Kira grabs Scotts' arm and tows him away to talk for a minute. I drum my thumbs against the steering wheel nervously until they return, then re-launch into my instructions. "Okay, so almost everybody's out dealing with the blackout, but there's always somebody at the front desk. Dispatch, usually a night shifter or two. You guys are going to use the service door entrance by the dumpster." I gesture with one hand. "Nobody uses it. I'll text you if anybody comes out, but Scott, if you get caught, I can't help you. My dad's under investigation for impeachment because of _your _dad, so if anything happens, I will run and leave you both for dead."

Kira's face falls in shock, but Scott just smiles, thanks me, and leads Kira into the building.

I wait. Probably five minutes, maybe ten. I continue drumming on my steering wheel, run through some Trig equations in my head, cross-check my working knowledge of the Argent's bestiary against some of the files Peter's shared, and am just about to text Scott for an update when my eyes settle on my keys again.

Mystery key. What do you do?

The dreams haven't been as bad recently. That may just be because I've been consciously not sleeping as much, but even in the dreams, or the dreams-within-dreams, I've been getting a little better at telling what's real. But this – this little detail of an explanation-less key just appearing out of nowhere – is tickling at the back of my mind, where that little voice telling me to count my fingers dwells.

Headlights.

"Aw, hell," I mutter, as I recognize both the SUV and the profile driving it. Scott's dad.

I already have the warning text cued up, so it's a simple matter to hit Send and pray that Scott's paying attention to his phone for once. Seconds pass as I watch McCall enter the building – through the freaking service door that no one's supposed to use – and then I'm dropping my phone and running after him into the station. I am _so _going to regret this.

I catch up with him just before he hits the door to my father's office, where he's pretty much set up shop, and thrown myself between him and the door with much arm-flailing and attention-grabbing. "Hey, hey! Thank God you are here, oh boy, thank the _Lord_."

He pins me with a stare akin to trapping an ant under a microscope on a sunny day.

"Well," I gulp. "I was just, thinking, you know – on the case! I was thinking and I was thinking that I should clue you in on my…thinking. So my thinking is that Barrow received the information on who to kill at the school, right? So I was thinking that maybe the person who gave him that information might actually – check this out – be someone…at…the…school. And that's…my thinking."

I suck in a large breath, relatively pleased with how that went, actually. I'm even more surprised when McCall opens his mouth and says, "You're right."

"I am?"

He nods. "We started looking for links between Barrow and the faculty and students last night."

I swing my arms awkwardly. "So you already know that stuff, then. You've already thought of that."

He cocks his head. "Your dad did."

"Oh! Well, great."

He leans around me to swipe his access card. "That's one useful suggestion, though."

My temper rises incredibly quickly at the tone in his voice and I find myself standing directly in his path again. "Hey, you know, this attitude you have towards my dad? You can dress it up to all the professional disapproval that you want, but I know the real reason."

He looks down at me. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, because he knows something that you don't want him to know," I say, and now I'm pretty much just making things up, but I'm so fricking pissed off at him for being here, for coming back and doing this to Scott and Mrs. McCall and my dad, and I know there's an inkling of truth in here somewhere from the way his mouth is tightening. "And guess what? I know it, too."

I watch it hit home – just a faint flicker of uncertainty, but it's there.

"Go home, Stiles," he says, gently but firmly pushing me out of his way. "There's a curfew."

Minutes later, Scott and Kira come pelting out of the station and skid to a stop in front of me.

"We did it," Scott says victoriously. "All the pics deleted."

"That was awesome!" Kira crows, out of breath but grinning widely. "I mean, terrifying – completely terrifying – but kind of awesome. I've never done anything like that before, have you?"

For what feels like the millionth time that day, Scott and I trade looks. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to agree with Scott – there's no way someone this excitable and happy and pure could possibly be evil. Right?

"Yeah," I say. "Once or twice."

When they've both caught their breath, Scott makes a minute head gesture at me and I climb back into my Jeep while he says, "So, I guess I should take you home."

In the side mirror, I watch Kira's face fall a little, and she nods reluctantly. I bite back a groan – these two are positively _tragic_.

Seconds before I fire up the Jeep, I hear Scott say, "Hey, you wouldn't want to go to a party, would you?"

* * *

I'm explaining the new key to Scott as we push through the door into Derek's loft and are met with a wall of sound and bodies.

"It just showed up on my keyring this morning," I say, shouting to make myself heard. "I asked my dad if he put it there, but he didn't know anything about it."

"It's just a key, right?" Scott asks.

"Yeah, but it's not mine," I say. It's hard to explain why this is bothering me so much. "And I don't know how it got there, or what it's for."

Scott catches my arm and looks at me seriously. "Do you want to leave so we can figure it out?"

I'm about to respond when one of the party-goers, a girl with orange hair and glowing lipstick to match, bounces up to us, plants a kiss on my cheek, calls "Happy Halloween!" and darts away into the crowd.

I clap Scott on the shoulder, astonished but unwilling to let this opportunity slide. "It can wait," I say, and abandon Scott and Kira to their own devices. The girl's difficult to trail through the insane crowd, but I catch her a few minutes later and wave my arms to get her attention.

"Hey, I kissed you!" she says, pointing at my cheek.

"Yeah, yeah, you kinda did!" I shout back. "What's your name?"

"I'm Kaitlyn!" she calls.

"Kaitlyn…." My brain whirs, clicks into place. "Oh my God, you're Kaitlyn." Kaitlyn, the girl who was camping the woods with her girlfriend. Kaitlyn, the girl whose girlfriend…

She looks at me like I've sprouted a second head. "Yeah, I know, I _just_ told you that."

"No, I know, I just…you, and your girlfriend, she's…" I trail off, uncertain about how to proceed.

"She died," Kaitlyn finishes for me.

"Yeah," I say. "Are you okay?""

"Yeah!" she calls back, then throws her hands up overhead. "Really drunk! Wanna dance?"

Before I can actually answer, she grabs my hand and tugs me into the crush of people. We dance for I don't know how long – until I've sweated through my shirt, until I have three missed texts from my dad about the curfew, until, like Isaac said, I'm actually having some success forgetting just how much my real life sucks these days.

Sometime later – twenty minutes? two hours? – we pantomime taking a break to one another and collapse along the sides of the loft. Kaitlyn goes foraging for drinks and comes back successful, and though I'd honestly kill for a water, I'm not going to say no to a beer right now.

"Do you have a bottle opener?" She says, tucking herself against my leg.

"Yes!" I dig my keys out of my pocket and use the bottle opener on my key ring to lever our drinks open. Before I can actually take a swig, Kaitlyn grabs my keys and holds one of them up into the light. "Your key has phosphors on it. Look!"

I squint, and sure enough, she's holding up the mystery key – and, sure enough, it's doing something weird. Glowing in the UV light, it looks like, from a fingerprint. I shift a little to get a better look, and when I look down to Kaitlyn to make sure I don't bump her, she's looking up at me, and then she kisses me and this…this is nice. This, I could get used to.

When we break to breathe, I manage, "I thought you liked girls?"

"I do like girls!" She chirps. "Do you?"

"Absolutely," I affirm. "So you also like boys."

"Absolutely," she grins. "Do you?"

I'm still thinking about that question, because I honestly don't think anyone's ever asked me anything quite that bluntly before, when she leans forward and kisses me again.

It takes every ounce of willpower I have to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head and pull away from this cute, intelligent, remarkably well-adjusted girl who actually seems interested in me. "I'm sorry – what are phosphors?"

"Any substance that luminesces," she says. "It's in your teeth, fingernails, laundry detergent. It's also in this," she grins, swiping a finger across my lips and showing me the bright orange paint that's transferred from her mouth to mine. "Reacts with the UV light. That's why it glows."

I nod and lean down to kiss her again, still processing. It takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up, and then I freeze and extricate myself from her once more. "How would I get phosphors on my keys?"

She thinks. "Have you been handling chemicals?"

"Nah, I don't think…." I don't know if my brain slams to a halt or takes off at two hundred miles per hour, but something big falls into place and the telltale signs of a panic attack are taking root in my chest and I _have to get out of here_. "I'm sorry," I say to Kaitlyn, clambering down from the bench. "I'm really, totally sorry. I just thought of something, and I have to go. I really don't want to – I want to stay, and I would just stay all night – sorry, I just really have to go." I scramble away, but nearly fall into a cooler of water bottles, so I grab one and race it back to her. "Here, drink that. Whole thing!"

And then I'm running – flat out sprinting –down the stairs, across the street, and down the block to where I parked the Jeep. Burning rubber on the way to school, purposefully blocking myself from thinking about what I'm thinking about because if I think about this while I'm driving, I will absolutely have a panic attack and I really, really don't want to crash.

At school, racing down the hallways and nearly spinning out around the corners, until I hit the science wing and slide to a halt outside the chemicals closet.

First, I count my fingers. I need to know, without a doubt, that this is real.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

I am awake. My name is Stiles Stilinski, and I am awake.

My new key fits perfectly into the lock on the chemicals closet. The chemicals closet where escaped Shrapnel Bomber, William Barrow, hid and masked his scent after escaping the hospital.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. I have ten fingers.

I slowly, slowly, slowly, let myself in to the main classroom and walk toward the chalkboard, which somehow hasn't been washed or written over since yesterday. Since Lydia and I stood in this very spot behind the teacher's desk and she wrote the corresponding symbols for each atomic number, the symbols that spelled out Kira's name.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. My breath is coming in tiny heaves that rack my entire body.

I pick up the piece of chalk and copy all the numbers, but I could stop after the first digit. It's my handwriting. I'm the one who left the message for Barrow.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. I have ten fingers. I am awake.


End file.
